Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 October 2021
39. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media if she will reconsider her Department's refusal to fund transport costs to allow children in rural schools to attend events in arts centres and theatres in order to provide equal access to the arts. [47969/21]
View answerI am firmly committed to enhancing opportunities for children and young people to participate in the arts and creative activities. The Creative Youth Plan was published in December 2017 as one of the five pillars of the Creative Ireland Programme. The Plan sets out a number of measures designed to enable the creative potential of every young person, both within the formal education system and in informal or community settings.
Implementation of the Plan is led by my Department in partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Arts Council.
The Creative Youth Plan has supported the roll-out of a number of new schools-based initiatives which aim to provide greater opportunity to whole school communities to engage with all forms of creativity – principally the Creative Schools programme, managed by the Arts Council, and Creative Clusters, a Schools Excellence Fund initiative of the Department of Education.
Within the support package for participating schools is an annual grant to enable them to develop and implement their planning and project work. Schools have complete discretion in the use of such grants – whether to further engage with local creative practitioners or to take the opportunity to visit external sites.
Since these two initiatives commenced in 2018, almost one thousand schools have been given the opportunity to engage with arts, culture and creativity in new ways, helping to enrich the learning experience of thousands of children and young people.
These programmes together with other Creative Youth initiatives, such as the Teacher Artist Partnership and Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers, aim to provide opportunities for schools to bring arts and creativity into the classroom, through collaboration with established artists.
In addition to these schools-based programmes, the Creative Ireland Programme continues to support a range of partners across the youth and cultural sectors, to enhance and increase equitable access to creative activities for young people. These include providing more creative writing opportunities, enhanced access to youth drama, and more recently providing better opportunities for youth groups to experience creative technologies. Key in this regard has been the establishment of Cruinniú na nÓg – the annual day of free creative activities for children and young people under 18 years of age. Cruinniú is funded by my department and delivered by the 31 local authorities. This year for example, on Saturday 12th June, my department’s support enabled over 630 events and activities to take place right around the country.
Expenditure on school transport costs is solely a matter for my colleague the Minister for Education. Similarly, the question of transport provision for school activities such as visits to arts centres, theatres and other cultural activities is a matter for Minister Foley and local school managers.
